heeded, though, perhaps, early, impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily observed. A grown person surfeiting with honey, no sooner hears the name of it, but his fancy immediately carries sickness and qualms to his stomach, and he cannot bear the very idea of it; other ideas of dislike, and sickness, and vomiting, presently accompany it, and he is disturbed, but he knows from whence to date this weakness, and can tell how he got this indisposition; had this happened to him by an over dose of honey, when a child, all the same effects would have followed, but the cause would have been mistaken, and the antipathy counted natural.

§ 8. I mention this, not out of any great necessity there is, in this present argument, to distinguish nicely between natural and acquired antipathies, but I take notice of it for another purpose, viz. that those who have children, or the charge of their education, would think it worth their while diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent, the undue connexion of ideas in the minds of young people. This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions; and though those relating to the health of the body, are, by discreet people, minded and fenced against; yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate more peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding, or passions, have been much less heeded than the thing deserves; nay, those relating purely to the understanding, have, as I suspect, been, by most men, wholly overlooked.

§ 9. A great cause of errors. This wrong connexion in our minds of ideas, in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that, perhaps, there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after.

§ 10. Instances.-The ideas of goblins and sprights, have really no more to do with darkness than light; yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives; but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other.

§ 11. A man receives a sensible injury from another, thinks on the man and that action over and over, and by ruminating on them strongly, or much in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them almost one; never thinks on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered comes into his mind with it, so

that he scarce distinguishes them, but has as much an aversion for the one as the other. Thus hatreds are often begotten from slight and innocent occasions, and quarrels propagated and continued in the world.

§ 12. A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place; he saw his friend die in such a room; though these have in nature nothing to do one with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings (the impression being once made) that of the pain and displeasure with it, he confounds them in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the other.

§ 13. Why time cures some disorders in the mind, which reason cannot. When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it is not in the power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in our minds, when they are there, will operate according to their natures and circumstances; and here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, which reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not power over, nor is able against them to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in other cases. The death of a child, that was the daily delight of his mother's eyes, and joy of her soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, and gives her all the torment imaginable: use the consolations of reason in this case, and you were as good preach ease to one on the rack, and hope to allay, by rational discourses, the pain of his joints tearing asunder: till time has by disuse separated the sense of that enjoyment, and its loss from the idea of the child returning to her memory, all representations, though ever so reasonable, are in vain; and therefore some, in whom the union between these ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives in mourning, and carry an incurable sorrow to their graves..

§ 14. Farther instances of the effect of the association of ideas. A friend of mine knew one perfectly cured of madness by a very harsh and offensive operation. The gentleman, who was thus recovered, with great sense of gratitude and acknowledgment, owned the cure all his life after, as the greatest obligation he could have received; but whatever gratitude and reason suggested to him, he could never bear the sight of the operator: that image brought back with it the idea of that agony which he suffered from his hands, which was too mighty and intolerable for him to endure.

§ 15. Many children imputing the pain they endured at school to the books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together, that a book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after; and thus reading

becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough, that some men cannot study in; and fashions of vessels, which though ever so clean and commodious, they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive; and who is there that bath not observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain person not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with that of the person, and he that has been thus subjected, is not able to separate them?

§ 16. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it. It is of a young gentleman, who having learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where he learned. The idea of this remarkable piece of household stuff, had so mixed itself with the turns and steps of all his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there, nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that, or some such other trunk, had its due position in the room. If this story shall be suspected to be dressed. up with some comical circumstances, a little beyond precise nature; I answer for myself, that I had it some years since from a very sober and worthy man, upon his own knowledge, as I report it: and I dare say, there are very few inquisitive persons, who read this, who have not met with accounts, if not examples, of this nature, that may parallel, or at least justify, this.

§ 17. Its influence on intellectual habits. Intellectual habits and defects this way contracted, are not less frequent and powerful, though less observed. Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by education or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings, will there be about separate spirits? let custom, from the very childhood, have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity?

Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and these two constantly together possess the mind; and then one body, in two places at once, shall unexamined be swallowed for a certain truth by an implicit faith, whenever that imagined infallible person dictates and demands assent without inquiry.

§ 18. Observable in different sects. Some such wrong and unnatural combinations of ideas will be found to establish the irre

Book 2. concilable opposition between different sects of philosophy and religion; for we cannot imagine every one of their followers to impose wilfully on himself, and knowingly refuse truth offered by plain reason. Interest, though it does a great deal in the case, yet cannot be thought to work whole societies of men to so universal a perverseness, as that every one of them, to a man, should knowingly maintain falsehood: some, at least, must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i. e. to pursue truth sincerely; and therefore there must be some thing that blinds their understandings, and makes them not see the falsehood of what they embrace for real truth. That which thus captivates their reasons, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense, will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of: some independent ideas, of no alliance to one another, are, by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, so coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together; and they can no more separate them in their thoughts, than if they were but one idea, and they operate as if they were so. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and consistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest, I had almost said, of all the errors in the world; or if it does not reach so far, it is at least the most dangerous one, since, so far as it obtains, it hinders men from seeing and examining. When two things in themselves disjoined appear to the sight constantly united; if the eye sees these things riveted which are loose, where will you begin to rectify the mistakes that follow in two ideas, that they have been accustomed so to join in their minds, as to substitute one for the other, and, as I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves? This, whilst they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of conviction, and they applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when indeed they are contending for error; and the confusion of two different ideas, which a customary connexion of them in their minds hath to them made in effect but one, fills their heads with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences.

§ 19. Conclusion. Having thus given an account of the original, sorts, and extent of our ideas, with several other considerations, about these (I know not whether I may say) instruments or materials of our knowledge; the method I at first proposed to myself would now require, that I should immediately proceed to show what use the understanding makes of them, and what knowledge we have by them. This was that, which, in the first general view I had of this subject, was all that I thought I should have to do:

but upon a nearer approach I find, that there is so close a connexion between ideas and words; and our abstract ideas and general words have so constant a relation one to another, that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our knowledge, which all consists in propositions, without considering, first, the nature, use, and signification of language; which therefore must be the business of the next book.

BOOK III. CHAPTER I.

OF WORDS OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL.

§ 1. Man fitted to form articulate sounds. God having designed man for a sociable creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a necessity, to have fellowship with those of his own kind; but furnished him also with language, which was to be the great instrument and common tie of society. Man therefore had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But this was not enough to produce language; for parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet, by no means, are capable of language.

§ 2. To make them signs of ideas. Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was farther necessary that he should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the thoughts of men's minds be conveyed from one to another.

§ 3. To make general signs.—But neither was this sufficient to make words so useful as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of language, that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be so made use of, as to comprehend several particular things: for the multiplication of words would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing need of a distinct name to be signified by. To remedy this inconvenience, language had yet a farther improvement in the use of general terms, whereby one word was made to mark a multitude of particular existences: which advantageous use of sounds was obtained only by the difference of the ideas they were made signs of: those names becoming general, which are made to stand for general ideas; and those remaining particular, where the ideas they are used for are particular.